Author
Topic: Iron and IPA's (Read 1841 times)

I was asking an employee at my LHBS about local water and brewing IPA's. He said that it's important to remove chlorine and iron in order to brew a good IPA and that I could achieve both of these tasks by using a carbon filter. However, when I started researching carbon filters, the info I read stated that they're not very good at removing iron but very effective at removing chlorine. Which is correct?

A greensand filter is effective at removing iron and manganese. Activated carbon is not effective at iron removal. Ion-exchange is a common iron removal technique and is suitable if the raw water is otherwise free of calcium and magnesium. If there is a lot of Ca or Mg, then the resulting Na or K content of the ion-exchange treated water is likely to be too high to brew with.

You may want to check on the type of treatment provided by those bring-your-own-bottle water vending machines. Many use municipal water, carbon filter it, send it through a UV disinfecting unit, and/or ozonate it, and dispense it by the gallon - basically, city water with the chlorine removed.

The machines that provide water pushed through RO membranes will most likely be marked fairly prominently as being treated by reverse osmosis.

« Last Edit: November 12, 2013, 11:33:21 PM by punatic »

Logged

There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way.